After we have a sense of what the advertiser is trying to
accomplish, we can ask how they go about achieving their marketing goals.
Does the advertisement offer a reason why to buy the product?
Or is it oriented more to emotional appeals? Does the ad feature the product
or does it focus on the people using it? Does it address the reader directly
with suggestions or commands? Does the ad offer a reduced price or a premium?
Does a celebrity provide an endorsement? Does it play on fear or anxiety
or make positive appeals?

Most of the ads you examine will contain both illustrations
and text. Advertising researchers devote large sums to testing consumers
responses to different colors, shapes, and layouts. Especially in recent
decades, advertisements often have been composed with minute attention
to detail and extensive pre-testing, so even the smallest facet of an
ad may reflect a marketing strategy. But deliberate or unintentional,
details of an advertisement may reveal something about the assumptions
and perceptions of those who created it. A hairstyle, a print font, a
border design all may have something to teach us.

How does the ad attract the readers attention? What
route do your eyes follow through the ad? How do styles fit with cultural
trends? What are the implications, for instance, of the stark black-and-white
photographs in many Depression-era ads that mimicked the tabloid newspapers
of the day? Does the rise of psychedelic graphic styles in
the late 1960s and 70s support Thomas Franks contention that counter
cultural values of personal fulfillment and immediate gratification
fit post-industrial corporate marketing needs? Do earth tones in recent
advertising support green marketing strategies of companies
hoping to appeal to environmentally-conscious buyers?

Virtually every advertisement provides opportunities for
this kind of analysis. Following Roland Marchands masterful interpretation
of a 1933 gasoline ad, we can examine the poses of father and son. (Click
here to see the advertisement in
the Roland Marchand Collection at A History Teachers Bag of Tricks,
Area 3 History and Cultures Project.) The father looks fearful, fatigued,
and aged. Marchand sees the boys clenched fist as a symbol of advertisers
implicit claim that will, determinationand consumptioncould
overcome the Depression, but his face also shows worry and shame. The
relation of the two imagesthe son foregrounded, the father behind
him and set against a darker-colored backgroundsuggests that the
father is not only falling behind in lifes race but is also failing
to provide patriarchal leadership and control.

The advertisements words complement the image. The
boys alarmGee, PopTheyre all passing yousits
in a cartoon balloon. Depression advertising, stripped of
the subtleties of more prosperous times, often adopted the blunt, lurid
style of comic strips. The text below directly addresses those who must
make your old car do a little longer in these days when we
have to do without so many things. Taken as a whole, the language,
design, and image of this advertisement evince the fear and humiliation
of hard times and try to convert these worries into motives to buy.